PKB Reflection Essay by Lara Wibeto EDC 503, Dr. Fogleman
My Personal Knowledge Base (PKB) was greatly expanded through Feedly and Evernote. The Evernote tool used for this class had a lot of interesting features that helped to keep my research materials organized. For example, I kept a notebook for Afterschool related articles for my Adopt an Issue research project. I was able to save and tag articles for specific article content which helped to further organize my articles by specific subtopics such as “Afterschool Successes” and “Summer Programs”. The notebooks that I used were organized according to specific subject matter as well as individual assignment importance. For example, “Afterschool Adopt An Issue” kept 9 articles, media, academic and blog type, that I collected through web clipping, Feedly, or other internet sources. I changed the names of notebooks as a subject or subtopic changed for my research which I see as having a huge organizational benefit to any research that I am conducting.
The Evernote quick functions inside the elephant tab were very useful to capture images, create notes, save photos, create lists, and to set reminders for project due dates. I took pictures of the professor’s notes and diagrams in class to make the process of recalling information much easier and to save time spent copying these notes and charts by hand. Evernote made creating citations easier for the web derived articles because the links show immediately at the top of the page within your notebook.
Feedly, an ISS Feed organizer website, was very instrumental used in conjunction with Evernote in capturing the information to enhance my research of contemporary education topics related to my class or a variety of other topics since it filtered all internet articles and blogs into major topic categories. I created feed folder names such as “Business”, “Education”, “Art In Education”, “Health”,”Local”, and ”Philanthropy”. One very useful subtopic for education is “Education in DC” which helps me track what is happening at the US Department of Education as well as in the US Congress in terms of legislation that impacts education. My “Local” internet feed helps separate education news into Rhode Island news and events. I think the “Local” folder on Feedly is very important to stay informed of issues in Rhode Island that may have an impact on education in different regions of our state as well as statewide. These federal and state education mandates that are discussed in the media and in blog articles have the potential to touch everyone involved in education, from the top policy makers down to the teaching staff, the students, and their families who will experience the most impact of federal and state changes in how education is delivered to our state’s students.
I will continue to use Feedly to stay up to date with the latest news and educational blog feeds not just for professional needs but for other areas of my life. I already have a “Culinary Arts” feed through Feedly(Sign Up Page. 2014. Retrieved from http://feedly.com/index.html#discover)because I enjoy creating delicious interesting meals for friends and family. It is also fun to share a recipe which Feedly allows me to do rather quickly and easily. I also have “Business” and “Health” feeds because those topics are important to me as well and of course for the ease of sharing and saving relevant information. I had some difficulty at times with the Evernote program only because my laptop is older and operated at times too slowly for Evernote to load properly. I would have to try to open Evernote several times before being able to open it. At these times I would have to use my tablet which was difficult to navigate because it lacked the ability to show all of the Evernote functions in the upper left hand corner or the pull down menu which the professor said that my tablet would not let me operate all of the Evernote functions due to limits in my Ipad’s computing ability. The only other drawback is Evernote’s internet shelf life. In a year, websites like Tumblr can quickly become unpopular or forgotten; therefore Evernote will have to add new features regularly to keep users engaged in the program and to avoid the internet or Web Application graveyard.
As a teaching professional, for professional research, and for future academic pursuits, I will use my Evernote to not only keep me organized but also to share information as well as using Evernote to make presentations. I like the presentation application which I was able to store videos on for future use when speaking about certain education topics such as using technology in the classroom, creating student presentations pre-K through 12, and being able to share those presentations with others. Parents could download the free Evernote application to use as a way to communicate with teachers and to stay informed about their child’s progress in a certain subject or across all subject areas if a school wide Evernote community was in place. I am going to continue to use and to recommend both Evernote and Feedly to my co-workers at Davisville Middle School as a way to do academic and professional research as staying up to date with new developments in education, teaching, and research in education is such an important part of being a successful pre-K through 12 teaching professional who is keeping the classroom technologically relevant to the students, especially when these children were born into the digital age with educational apps on their parents’ smart phones ranging from infancy learner level(Parent Magazine. 2014. http://www.parents.com/fun/entertainment/gadgets/best-iphone-apps-for-baby/.) through to apps for their college endeavors such as Evernote which can be accessed at http://evernote.com/.
In closing, my PKB was enhanced by Feedly, Evernote, and Skitch(Evernote application. 2014. Retrieved from http://evernote.com/skitch/). These PKB applications will continue to serve a purpose for me as long as they are the most up to date data collection, sharing, and presentation tools available which they are at this time. I realize also the importance of watching the user guide videos and learning about the in depth features of these PKB tools. I will likely use Skitch for labelling presentations and creating animations which is going to be nice with a Smartboard or as Evernote messages to students and colleagues. I am not a graphic artist; however Skitch has easy to use art features that I will continue to try to master for future use in academically, professionally, and in my personal life. I will also continue to use sites such as Mindmup (Mind Map Creation Website. 2014. Retrieved from https://www.mindmup.com/) which allows you to make professional quality charts and graphs which are extremely useful in a variety of ways when presenting information to others. In closing, I want to say how much these websites helped me to succeed in this graduate level class. It was a much needed condensed and rapid progression course in classroom related technology and contemporary education that is essential knowledge as well as useful to me that I will continue to utilize beyond this graduate course.
by Lara Wibeto
EDC 503, Dr. Fogleman
My Personal Knowledge Base (PKB) was greatly expanded through Feedly and Evernote. The Evernote tool used for this class had a lot of interesting features that helped to keep my research materials organized. For example, I kept a notebook for Afterschool related articles for my Adopt an Issue research project. I was able to save and tag articles for specific article content which helped to further organize my articles by specific subtopics such as “Afterschool Successes” and “Summer Programs”. The notebooks that I used were organized according to specific subject matter as well as individual assignment importance. For example, “Afterschool Adopt An Issue” kept 9 articles, media, academic and blog type, that I collected through web clipping, Feedly, or other internet sources. I changed the names of notebooks as a subject or subtopic changed for my research which I see as having a huge organizational benefit to any research that I am conducting.
The Evernote quick functions inside the elephant tab were very useful to capture images, create notes, save photos, create lists, and to set reminders for project due dates. I took pictures of the professor’s notes and diagrams in class to make the process of recalling information much easier and to save time spent copying these notes and charts by hand. Evernote made creating citations easier for the web derived articles because the links show immediately at the top of the page within your notebook.
Feedly, an ISS Feed organizer website, was very instrumental used in conjunction with Evernote in capturing the information to enhance my research of contemporary education topics related to my class or a variety of other topics since it filtered all internet articles and blogs into major topic categories. I created feed folder names such as “Business”, “Education”, “Art In Education”, “Health”,”Local”, and ”Philanthropy”. One very useful subtopic for education is “Education in DC” which helps me track what is happening at the US Department of Education as well as in the US Congress in terms of legislation that impacts education. My “Local” internet feed helps separate education news into Rhode Island news and events. I think the “Local” folder on Feedly is very important to stay informed of issues in Rhode Island that may have an impact on education in different regions of our state as well as statewide. These federal and state education mandates that are discussed in the media and in blog articles have the potential to touch everyone involved in education, from the top policy makers down to the teaching staff, the students, and their families who will experience the most impact of federal and state changes in how education is delivered to our state’s students.
I will continue to use Feedly to stay up to date with the latest news and educational blog feeds not just for professional needs but for other areas of my life. I already have a “Culinary Arts” feed through Feedly(Sign Up Page. 2014. Retrieved from http://feedly.com/index.html#discover)because I enjoy creating delicious interesting meals for friends and family. It is also fun to share a recipe which Feedly allows me to do rather quickly and easily. I also have “Business” and “Health” feeds because those topics are important to me as well and of course for the ease of sharing and saving relevant information.
I had some difficulty at times with the Evernote program only because my laptop is older and operated at times too slowly for Evernote to load properly. I would have to try to open Evernote several times before being able to open it. At these times I would have to use my tablet which was difficult to navigate because it lacked the ability to show all of the Evernote functions in the upper left hand corner or the pull down menu which the professor said that my tablet would not let me operate all of the Evernote functions due to limits in my Ipad’s computing ability. The only other drawback is Evernote’s internet shelf life. In a year, websites like Tumblr can quickly become unpopular or forgotten; therefore Evernote will have to add new features regularly to keep users engaged in the program and to avoid the internet or Web Application graveyard.
As a teaching professional, for professional research, and for future academic pursuits, I will use my Evernote to not only keep me organized but also to share information as well as using Evernote to make presentations. I like the presentation application which I was able to store videos on for future use when speaking about certain education topics such as using technology in the classroom, creating student presentations pre-K through 12, and being able to share those presentations with others. Parents could download the free Evernote application to use as a way to communicate with teachers and to stay informed about their child’s progress in a certain subject or across all subject areas if a school wide Evernote community was in place.
I am going to continue to use and to recommend both Evernote and Feedly to my co-workers at Davisville Middle School as a way to do academic and professional research as staying up to date with new developments in education, teaching, and research in education is such an important part of being a successful pre-K through 12 teaching professional who is keeping the classroom technologically relevant to the students, especially when these children were born into the digital age with educational apps on their parents’ smart phones ranging from infancy learner level(Parent Magazine. 2014. http://www.parents.com/fun/entertainment/gadgets/best-iphone-apps-for-baby/.) through to apps for their college endeavors such as Evernote which can be accessed at http://evernote.com/.
In closing, my PKB was enhanced by Feedly, Evernote, and Skitch(Evernote application. 2014. Retrieved from http://evernote.com/skitch/). These PKB applications will continue to serve a purpose for me as long as they are the most up to date data collection, sharing, and presentation tools available which they are at this time. I realize also the importance of watching the user guide videos and learning about the in depth features of these PKB tools. I will likely use Skitch for labelling presentations and creating animations which is going to be nice with a Smartboard or as Evernote messages to students and colleagues. I am not a graphic artist; however Skitch has easy to use art features that I will continue to try to master for future use in academically, professionally, and in my personal life. I will also continue to use sites such as Mindmup (Mind Map Creation Website. 2014. Retrieved from https://www.mindmup.com/) which allows you to make professional quality charts and graphs which are extremely useful in a variety of ways when presenting information to others. In closing, I want to say how much these websites helped me to succeed in this graduate level class. It was a much needed condensed and rapid progression course in classroom related technology and contemporary education that is essential knowledge as well as useful to me that I will continue to utilize beyond this graduate course.